


Bad Things Happen Bingo: Fever

by taylor_tut



Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Coughing, David Acting as Max's (Camp Camp) Parental Figure, Fever, Gen, Illnesses, Influenza, Parental David (Camp Camp), Protective Max (Camp Camp), Sick Character, Sick David (Camp Camp), Sickfic, Whump, dadvid
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-02-28 16:15:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18759931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/pseuds/taylor_tut
Summary: David takes Max on the technology-free hike that transformed him from an apathetic kid with a bad attitude into the enthusiastic camper he is today. Since he's convinced that this is exactly the thing Max needs, he's not going to let anything stop him from making this the best hike ever—not even a rainstorm and a high fever. Now, with no medicine and no cell phone to call for help, Max must draw on what little he knows about survival to get them through the night until the others come looking for them the next morning.





	1. Chapter 1

“Good morning, campers!” David chirped, not allowing the predictable lack of response to dampen his chipper mood. “Today, I have something super special planned, so I’d love if everyone would listen up!” 

That got a little attention, but Max, the one camper he needed to hear him, didn’t look up from his breakfast. 

“A surprise?” Nikki asked, bouncing in her seat. “Is it candy? Or a pony? Or dynamite? Or—”

“—Why don’t I just tell you what it is,” David cut her off lightly. “The surprise is that I’ll be taking one lucky camper on a hiking trip!” 

Neil rolled his eyes. “We go camping all the time,” he pointed out. “That’s not special.”

“Unless we’re hiking to our new pony!” 

“Yeah, David, where’s the pony?” Nurf demanded. 

“This trip is special because it’s a tradition,” David explained. “It’s the trip that turned me into the happy, excited camp counselor I am today!” 

Now, Max looked up, apparently listening more than he’d been letting on. “So it’s a hike to the hospital for a lobotomy?” 

David shook one finger at him scoldingly. “No,” he corrected, “it’s a hike through the woods around Lake Lilac! The exciting part is—wait for it,” he reveled in a dramatic pause that had only Nikki, Preston, and Space Kid drawn in, “there’s no technology allowed!” 

Disappointed mutterings filled the mess hall, but David ignored them. 

“So, who, you’re asking, is the lucky camper that gets to go on this amazing, once in a lifetime hike?”

“Please don’t say Max; please don’t say Max,” Max muttered under his breath. 

“It’s our very own Max!”

“Nope,” he replied, abandoning his tray, save for an apple that he took with him, and heading toward the exit of the mess hall. David was quick to block the doors. 

“Not so fast!” he said cheerfully. “You’re coming on this hike whether you like it or not. And you’ll love it!”

“I’m not going,” Max denied. 

“That’s how I felt, too, when I was your age,” David reminisced. “But this is the moment that changed everything for me! I can’t wait to watch this turn you into a gun-ho, full-speed-ahead Camp Campbell camper, just like it did for me!” 

“It’s not happening,” Max reiterated. “It’s stupid and I’m not going.” 

“Oh, yes you are,” Gwen interjected. “David has to take one of the campers on this hike, and I already told him that the only way he’s leaving me alone to manage the camp is if you’re not here to cause trouble.” 

Ouch, David thought. She didn’t have to be so harsh on the kid all the time. Though he’d never show it, David could tell that stung Max a little. As much as he wanted everyone to think otherwise, especially her, Max liked Gwen and wanted her to like him, too. David was able to see that she did, but Max, just a kid, might not be. 

“It’ll be fun, Max! I promise.” 

Max didn’t argue, though David wasn’t so naive to think that was a good thing. He’d just have to prove it to him. 

 

The first mistake he made was that David spent most of the night before their hiking trip preparing instead of sleeping. He stayed up late making sure that he’d packed Max’s favorite kind of sandwiches, that he had the maps and directions memorized so they wouldn’t get too lost, that they were prepared for any kind of weather. By the time he was finally ready to turn in and get some sleep, he’d only left himself about three hours to sleep, which he knew wasn’t good the night before a big, energetically taxing event, but he didn’t mind. All that mattered was making sure that Max had a good time and was ready to find himself in nature. David was going to make sure that much happened, at least. 

The second mistake was choosing not to reschedule the hike when he noticed the dark storm clouds overhead, reassuring himself that it would just be more of a challenge and the more he challenged Max, the more satisfaction he’d get from overcoming it. The kid needed to find himself, after all. David saw a lot of his younger self in Max, and the opportunity to give him a little more confidence so he didn’t have to hide behind that hard shell of indifference was one he wasn’t willing to delay. God knows that Max craved stability, for someone to care enough to keep their promises. 

The third and most costly mistake that David made was ignoring the pounding headache and sore throat that he woke up with, shivering and in a pool of sweat, the morning that they were supposed to get going. Instead of telling Max that they’d have to do it another day so he’d have a chance to rest, or going to Gwen and getting something for the fever he was pretty sure he was starting to run, or really doing anything at all about the unfortunate scenario, he simply pulled his clothes on, adding an extra layer for warmth, and headed to the mess for breakfast. 

“Morning, Gwen!” he greeted, trying for his normal energy but feeling it falling flat. 

Gwen eyed him for a moment before pushing her mug of coffee toward him. He wasn’t sure if that was because she could tell he wasn’t feeling well or not, but if she could, she didn’t mention it. 

“It’s too early,” she baited, waiting for him to latch onto a statement that he’d normally reject. He could spot that trick from a mile away.

“It just seems that way because the sun is behind the clouds,” he dismissed, pausing to muffle a too-deep cough into the sleeve of his cardigan. 

She gave him a scrutinizing look as he sipped his coffee and he almost sighed. So that was a test, too, he realized. 

“How much sleep did you get last night?” 

David shrugged. “Enough,” he dodged. When her glare didn’t lessen, he shifted. “Excitement for the hike will be more than enough to keep me going, anyway!” 

“That’s bullshit,” Gwen disagreed. “Besides, you look like hell. Either you were up all night, or you’re getting sick, and I’m actually willing to bet that it’s both, ‘cause I can hear you breathing from here.”

David coughed a few times in an attempt to alleviate the wheeziness in his lungs but only ended up exemplifying it. When Gwen looked like she’d won, David brushed her off with a dismissive hand gesture. 

“It’s barely even a cold,” he reassured. “I’m still taking Max on the hike.” 

“No.”

“But—”

“—’But’ nothing, David; don’t be an idiot! It’s going to rain all day, and if Max senses even the slightest amount of weakness from you, he’ll literally eat your heart. If you’ve got to do it, go another day.” 

“I already told Max that there’s no rain checks, no way no how. What kind of example am I setting if I go back on my word?”

“The kind that doesn’t get both of you killed in the forest?” 

“Max!” David exclaimed as Max pushed grumpily through the doors of the mess hall, ignoring Gwen as if she hadn’t spoken. “Are you ready for the best day ever?” 

Max opened his mouth but shut it again when David’s enthusiasm was cut off by a rough cough that he tried and failed to control. 

“Seriously?” he asked, looking more at Gwen than at David. “The weather is shit, and you sound like death. Even you’re not stupid enough to go hiking like this.”

“Apparently he is,” Gwen interjected. 

“I packed our lunches,” David barrelled through, “and I’ve got our raincoats and the backpack right here.” He crossed the cafeteria to the door and motioned for Max to crouch beside him. In a messy pile, one which was uncharacteristically haphazard for David, lay all the things that they could possibly need. He opened the larger backpack and began to pull things out one by one. 

“This is a compass,” David said as he held one up, and Max rolled his eyes. 

“I know what a compass is, asshole,” he quipped, but David was unphased. 

“You have to use it with a map,” he continued. “You line it up with the compass rose; that’s how you know where to go.” 

Max wasn’t listening. Instead, he was leafing through the rest of the supplies in the large backpack, pulling out things like water bottles, tarps, tents, matches, flashlights, and a first aid kit. 

“Won’t this weigh, like, 50 pounds?” he asked, trying and failing to lift the backpack on his own. David simply chuckled and ruffled his hair. 

“Don’t worry about that,” he reassured. “Yours is much lighter.” Max looked for a moment like he was dreading picking up his own, but when he did, he nearly threw it across the room as he overestimated how much it would weigh. Unbuckling the flap, Max opened the backpack and peered inside to see what David had made him carry: the sandwiches, some trail mix, a small booklet about wilderness survival, and a pair of binoculars. 

“This is a stupid idea, David,” Gwen called from across the room as David shrugged into his backpack and staggered for a moment under its weight. 

“We’ll be back before breakfast tomorrow; I promise,” David replied, his raspy voice barely audible from her place at the table. She bit down on her nails, knowing that this could only go very poorly as her cocounselor walked woozily out into the light rain with the camper who was least likely to care if anything happened to him. 

 

Two and a half hours later, the rain had brought the temperature down by several degrees, enough that Max was beginning to feel chilly even under his raincoat and hoodie.

“I never thought I’d say this, but I want to go back to camp,” Max complained, not for the first time since they’d started walking. His feet were cold and aching, he was damp, and most of all, he was bored. He’d prepared for David to talk his ear off by pointing out every little bird and tree and rock along the dirt trail, but the reality was the opposite: David had barely said a word since they’d left the camp. 

“You know, this isn’t changing my mind,” he said, hoping that perhaps he could get David riled up enough to argue with him because at least that might kill some time. “This sucks. It’s only making me hate this place more.” 

The only reply was David coughing a few more times into his elbow, something that was becoming a near-constant, background noise. Max had been willing to accept, at first, that he just had a cold or something, and therefore hadn’t been too worried about it. He and all the other kids he knew went to school with little colds all the time, and they were always fine. However, if that was all that was up with David, it sure was draining his energy, because he was silent and sluggish. Even at the less-than-eager pace with which Max was pressing forward, David was unable to keep up. 

“So, where the hell are we going, anyway?” Max asked. He’d been asked to hold the map and compass, but David hadn’t really given him much of an objective, so they’d been wandering for a while. 

“Wherever you lead,” David replied, and when he did, Max was surprised enough at the tone of his voice to stop dead in his tracks. He was breathing hard and fast, not to mention that despite his silence, his voice was practically gone. David cleared his throat a few times, then began coughing again. When he finished, he looked back up at Max with a forced smile on his pale face. 

“You’re in charge; that’s what this whole thing is about!” he managed quietly but with an almost convincing amount of fake cheer. 

“Then why can’t I choose to go back to the camp?” 

“Oh, Max, don’t be like that,” he chastised. However, the complaints finally gave him pause. “You’re not really having that bad a time, are you?” 

Max rolled his eyes. “Does it matter? Neither of us want to be out here, so what are we doing?”

David looked aghast. “Of course I want to be out here!” he argued. “Why would you think I don’t?”

Max didn’t even want to dignify that with a response. If David was really going to be that stubborn, it wasn’t Max’s job to convince him otherwise. He’d let him stay delusional as long as he wanted, so long as they got out of here in one piece. 

 

With no technology and no sun, Max was left to try to measure the time of day based on his stomach. At what felt like noon, Max’s stomach began to growl just as they entered a clearing by the lake. 

“I think we should take a break,” he announced, “and eat lunch.” He half expected David to object, or worse, tell him that it was still only 9:00 a.m., but he didn’t: instead, he nodded, following Max to a tree stump and setting the backpack heavily down on top of it to fish around for a tarp, which he unrolled on the ground so they could have a dry place to eat. Max sat down on it and took off his own backpack, unpacking two of the sandwiches and some trail mix for lunch. One glance over at David revealed that he’d leaned his back up against the tree stump and had closed his eyes, so Max decided to go through his backpack, too, for the water bottles. He dropped a sandwich and a bottle into David’s lap, which startled him awake a bit violently. His face went even more pale, if that were possible, at the sight of the food, which he pushed away gently. 

“I’m still full from breakfast,” he lied, or at least Max was pretty sure it was a lie. He hadn’t eaten while Max had gotten breakfast, and he was willing to bet that he hadn’t had anything before that, either. Even more disconcertingly, David acctually closed his eyes once more, crossing his arms in a way that brought Max’s attention to the fact that he was shivering and letting his head fall forward to rest against his chest. “I’m actually going to take a quick nap,” David said. “I got to bed pretty late last night, and I want to make sure I have the energy to—”

“—Yeah, yeah; whatever,” Max curtailed. “Sleep as long as you want.”

“If I’m not up in 20 minutes, you can wake me,” he instructed. 

Max didn’t really know what he was supposed to make of that. Clearly, there was something wrong with David. Maybe he was just exhausted and a little under the weather, like he was insisting upon, but something didn’t feel right about that explanation. The thing about David was that he bounced back. He could get hit by a bus and stand back up like nothing happened; he could spend all night staring at the ceiling, too excited to sleep, and it never seemed to make a dent in his energy levels. He cried a lot, sure, but he was more durable than anyone really gave him credit for, and Max, ever-perceptive, knew that. 

For that reason, he decided that he wouldn’t wake David until he woke up naturally by himself. If the guy needed sleep that badly, Max should let him get it. Besides, it wasn’t as if he had anywhere he really wanted to get to. He still hadn’t picked a destination, wasn’t even sure how far into the forest they were supposed to go before cutting their losses, heading back, and admitting that a little nature walk wasn’t enough to uncoil the damages that Max had woven so tightly into every part of his personality. 

Why was David trying so hard, anyway? Was it really the end of the world to him if Max came away from Camp Campbell just as cynical this year as every other? 

He watched David rest because he had nothing more interesting to stare at and definitely not because he was starting to worry about him. The longer he looked, the more apparent it became that Max had never seen him like this: not just his behavior, but the paleness of his face, the hand that clutched his chest as if it hurt just to breathe, the dark circles under his eyes. 

He had to admit, it was starting to freak him out. What if David was really sick? It would be just like him to drag himself through camp activities, anyway. 

Max forced that thought out of his head. Even David couldn’t be stupid enough to strand them in the middle of nowhere with no cell phones and a seemingly worstening illness, right?

 

After half an hour of resting, David woke up by himself and helped Max pack the makeshift picnicsite back up and put it away. 

An hour later, he began to stumble every so often over what he said were tree roots and rocks, but Max was convinced it was his own feet. 

Two hours after that, he cut his palm open on a tree branch. Max watched as he disinfected it with shaking hands, then lost patience and wrenched David’s hand toward him, ignoring the wince it elicited, to bandage it himself. It was worryingly hot and clammy despite the cold rian, but he didn’t say a word since this was already more care than he wanted to show David and to point out that he was pretty sure the counselor was running a fever would just tip the scales into full-blown concern. 

An hour and a half after the cut, David muttered something about having to pee, staggered away behind some bushes, and threw up what little water Max had managed to scare him into drinking under threatening glares. 

Still, so long as David seemed capable of pressing forward, Max was willing to let things slide. 

Until he wasn’t. 

The sun was just beginning to set when David collapsed. He’d been yards feet behind Max, dragging his feet rather than fully picking them up, and had barely even made a sound when he hit the ground. Max turned around to see that he’d caught himself on his hands and knees, but his arms were wavering like they wouldn’t hold him up for long and the backpack was definitely heavy enough to crack his ribs if he fell forward. 

“David!” Max exclaimed, unable to keep the panic from his tone. In a heartbeat, Max was by his side, pushing him up by the shoulders to keep him from being crushed beneath their supplies. He managed to push David backward onto his ass, where his eyes fluttered dangerously, but he appeared to remain conscious. 

“Sorry, just a second,” David mumbled, his words slurring a bit. His teeth were chattering. 

“What the hell is wrong with you?” 

David shook his head. “Nothing to worry about, Max,” he reassured. “M’just a little tired.” 

Normally, Max would have challenged that with a shouting match, but David didn’t seem quite coherent enough for that. Drawing on all the anger management bullshit he’d been forced through with the fifth-grade counselor when he’d acted out in school, Max took a deep breath, in through his nose and out through his mouth, before speaking. 

“Okay,” he said through gritted teeth. “Then we’re gonna have to set up camp here, right?” 

David nodded. He moved to begin assembling the tent, but Max smacked his hands away none too gently. 

“You—you just sit there and don’t touch anything,” he snapped. “If you pass out on me, I’m leaving you here.” It was still a bit of a fight to wrestle the supplies away from David, who was the adult and clearly wanted to be doing the adult parts of the hiking trip, things like making sure they had food and water and shelter and weren’t going to die here in the forest, but there was no way that Max could let him attempt that in the state he was in. He ran a hand nervously throuhg his hair. 

“Okay,” he mumbled to himself, “okay. First thing is—shelter. Pitch the tent in a safe place.” They wanted to be near enough a water source that they could get some if they needed it, but far enough away that they wouldn’t be right in the path of animals getting food and drink. Max had seen a river about ten minutes ago, so he figured that was good enough. They didn’t appear to be near any caves or cliffs or under any rocks that might fall. Max unrolled one of the tarps over the wet grass, then spent ten minutes muttering profanities as he assembled the tent. When he took a step away from it, he sighed and smacked his forehead with a small, flat palm: it barely even looked like it would stay up through the night, not to mention providing them any shelter. 

However, when David finally got the wherewithal to look up at it, his eyes filled with tears. 

“It looks beautiful, Max,” he said, and even though Max knew he was lying, he had to bite down on the proud smile that threatened to show itself on his face. 

A loud clap of thunder wiped away that ghost of a smile immediately. 

“Get inside, you dumbass,” he demanded, helping David unsteadily to his feet and walking him all the way to the tent before helping him lie down inside. He made a second trip to haul the heavy backpack inside and couldn’t help but wonder how David had carried it around all day in his state. 

As David’s eyes closed, Max slapped his cheek once, hard. 

“Not yet, asshole,” he said. He shoved a water bottle at him, then took it back and unscrewed the cap when David struggled to do so. “Drink it. At least half.” 

David managed maybe a fourth before pushing the bottle away looking a little green in the face and Max had no choice but to accept that—better to have him hold down a little water than throw up a bunch of it. 

When David laid back down, Max realized just how cold it had gotten now that night had fallen. He couldn’t build a fire with rain like this, and the two thin blankets that they’d packed, he’d placed over David to try to stop him shivering. 

As if reading his mind, David lifted the corner of the blanket and scooted to the side. Max hesitated. He didn’t want to be that close to the counselor, not by a long shot, but it seemed as if it was going to be his only option. 

He compromised. Not feeling tired enough to sleep, yet, Max crawled next to David and tucked the blankets around himself while still sitting up. Taking advantage of his twilight consciousness, Max reached out a hand and pressed it to David’s forehead, finding an amount of heat that surprised him even despite that he was expecting a fever. 

“Fuck, David,” Max whispered. “You couldn’t have snuck an emergency phone out here or something?” 

This sucked. He was the last canper who should be out here with a seriously ill person. Max hadn’t listened to a single word that David had tried to teach him all summer about survival or first aid or the woods. Suddenly, he wanted Gwen. He wanted Nikki and Neil. More than anything, he wanted David, the David who always fixed everything no matter how badly it got messed up and never thought any less of him no matter how apathetic and unprepared he was. 

They just had to make it through the night. By lunch tomorrow, someone would come looking for them. He just had to keep them both alive until then.


	2. Chapter 2

For being as exhausted as he was, David slept fitfully. Max had expected him to sleep like a rock, considering how difficult it had been just to keep him awake long enough to drink a little water, but it seemed as though Max woke every hour or so to David squirming through a fever-induced nightmare or to kick blankets off his overheated body as he fluctuated wildly between hot and cold. At least, he tried to count his blessings, David seemed to be tolerating the water this time. 

He put it off as long as he could, feeling more sure with each passing second that the sun would be rising any minute, but after the adrenaline from the hike wore off, Max began to feel cold to the point of discomfort. Paired with the fact that David’s teeth were chattering so hard in his sleep that Max was afraid he’d chip one, he realized with dread that he was going to have no choice but to build a fire. 

“Fuck,” he cursed, looking to David and knowing that he wasn’t well enough to help him but finding himself for the first time ever craving one of his annoying lectures that he normally did his best to tune out. 

Max dug through his backpack for the wilderness survival book and leafed through the pages until he came upon the chapter about starting and maintaining a fire. It had been raining all day, but the book said that didn’t necessarily mean that he couldn’t have a fire—it would just be more difficult than he’d like. But what about this wasn’t?

He searched around for a dying tree, one which had lost both branches and leaves, and dug through the brush, careful to avoid the slugs and spiders, for some logs and leaves dry enough to start a fire. It took a few trips with his small, tired arms, but eventually, he gathered enough material for a small pile, which he enclosed within a circle of rocks before sitting back down to read on in the chapter. 

He was lucky that David didn’t consider matches to be too technical to bring because if he’d had to rub two sticks together for a spark, he might have given up before he even started. 

Once it was lit and stable enough to leave unattended, Max climbed back into the tent and shook David roughly by the shoulder. 

“It’s time to get up now, Camp Man,” he called with nowhere near his normal level of condescension, bordering on softly. David didn’t so much as stir, and Max frowned. “Hey,” he tried a second time, louder now. “Wake up. I’m not dragging your ass all the way out there.” Just as he began to wonder whether he should check David’s pulse, he cracked one eye open groggily. “David,” Max scolded before sleep inertia could take him back under, “I mean it. Get up.” 

David groaned. “A few more minutes,” he grumbled, but Max wasn’t having any of it. 

“You can go back to sleep in a minute,” he reassured irritably. He tried to take the blanket as an incentive to get his ass moving, but David clutched it tightly. 

“Cold,” he whined. 

“No shit,” Max rolled his eyes. “That’s why I built a fire.” David’s eyes snapped open, but not in a pleasant way. 

“Fire?”

“Relax,” Max hushed. “I didn’t use gasoline this time. I followed your stupid book rules. It’s controlled and probably so small that it probably won’t last, so get moving.” Visibly, David weighed the discomfort and effort of moving with the gratification of warmth, and luckily, he ultimately decided, whether it was for himself or to calm the worried look in Max’s eyes, that it was worth it and slowly, sluggishly, began to pull himself up. As soon as he was in a seated position, he blinked long and slow, one hand moving to clutch his forehead as his breath caught, first in discomfort and then in another fit of harsh coughing. It still sounded deep in his lungs, like he was choking on fluid that he simply couldn’t expel, and it made Max wonder if he could even possibly breathe sounding like that. David, however, was only momentarily deterred, as he forced himself to follow Max out of the tent and sit by the fire. It reflected brightly in his feverish, green eyes, and the weak smile that spread across his face was not forced. 

“You did a good job,” he rasped breathlessly. 

“Yeah, well,” he muttered. “It’s barely anything. Not even putting off any heat, really.” David opened his blanket for Max to scoot closer, in response to which he shook his head vehemently. “No fucking way am I getting that close to you. I’d rather freeze to death.”

A sad look passed over David’s face, unable to conceal it, and he nodded, slipping one blanket off his shoulders and handing it to Max. 

“Don’t argue,” he said firmly but kindly. “Can’t have you catching something, too.”

Max nodded, taking the blanket. 

“So, what’s even wrong with you?” he asked. David shrugged, and Max believed that he probably DIDN’T have any real idea. Though he’d clearly been peaky in the morning, this fever had come on so fast. One minute, he was hiking through the forest, and all of a sudden, he was too weak to move at all. 

“Nothing that won’t pass,” David managed through chattering teeth. “It’ll be okay.”

Max could cry. “That’s just something adults say when they don’t want kids to find out that it’s a shit show.” David was silent. “But you’re not exactly bursting my bubble by telling me that, so you might as well just say it.”

“I won’t, because it’s not true.” 

“Yes, it is!” Max snapped. “We’re lost in the forest with nothing to eat, barely any water, and no way to call for help.”

“That’s what camping is, Max.”

“Whatever! You’re sick and loopy and useless! I can’t do anything! I told you this was a shitty idea, and now we’re gonna die out here.” 

David shifted to look him dead in the eyes. “Listen to me, Max. No one is dying out here. Not again. 

The next time Max woke up, it was to David bolting away from under the blanket and toward the bushes to be sick again. At this point, Max didn’t know what else he could possibly have left in him—he’d slept while Max had eaten his sandwich and had turned green at the sight of the plain cereal that Max had picked out of the trail mix and tried to feed him. 

He gave David his privacy. Only once had Max ever been ill publically—in the school library after his mom had sent him to school with the stomach flu because she hadn’t had the time to stay home from work—and he’d wanted to die, so although he was confident that David wouldn’t remember this later, anyway, he decided to leave him alone. 

When he’d finished, he stumbled back to the campsite and collapsed, face down, into the unforgiving dirt. The fire was out, so there was no real reason to stay outside the tent, but Max wasn’t so sure he’d make it back inside without passing out again. 

“David,” Max called. “You need water.” Badly, his mind added. David mustered up the strength to nod, so Max reached for the canteen and handed it to him. He struggled to take it with shaking hands, tried twice unsuccessfully to bring it to his lips, then fumbled with it hard enough to drop it on the ground. His expression barely changed even as Max shouted and lunged forward in a futile attempt to catch it, but of course, it clattered to the ground and spilled what little water they had. 

Max took a sharp breath through his nose, one he would normally use to berate David. David braced himself. Max exhaled through his mouth. Repeated that. Something that his school counselor (and, surprisingly, Nurf) had told him to do before he insulted someone. He’d never done it before: because why would he? The people he yelled at deserved what they got for being stupid. 

Except David wasn’t being stupid. He was trying his best, trying to do something nice for Max, the most troubled kid at camp. He was doing the job he was paid probably way too little to do and trying to do it well. And yet Max was still angry. He was possibly angrier than he’d ever felt, and at someone who was ill and barely conscious. 

Huh. Maybe there was something to what his counselor had said about lashing out because he felt scared and alone. 

The wind howled through the trees. 

Whatever was lurking in the brush rustled quietly in search of bugs for dinner. 

David’s eyes were shut. 

And Max was functionally, painfully, alone. 

He reached out, feeling guilty when David flinched, and pressed his palm against his forehead, feeling panic well up inside him.

“You’re fucking boiling, David,” he said softly, sadly. “You’re gonna dehydrate.”

David paled. “Spilled…” he trailed off weakly, sounding more disoriented than Max was comfortable with. 

“That’s why I’m gonna go get us some more.” 

It spoke to just how out of it David was that he didn’t even try to argue. His eyes fluttered shut again, and based on his waning coherency, the red flush to his sweatless face, and the fact that Max’s hand was still tingling with the temperature difference, he guessed that David’s fever was, like, brain-meltingly high. 

He didn’t want to go into the forest alone, but because he had to, he picked up his backpack, the canteen, and his compass and headed into the darkness. 

Max wandered. He tried not to, did his best to keep in a straight line, but despite acting like he was an expert in using compasses to David earlier that morning, once he actually had to keep it lined up with the map, he was struggling. How was he expected to watch the compass and the map and his surroundings at the same time when he’d never done anything more than look down at his own feet during hikes like these?

He racked his brain for anything helpful that David might have told him. Mostly, what he remembered were his own sarcastic remarks rather than the given advice, which made him feel retroactively like a bit of an ass. What would have happened if he’d gotten lost out here during one of his pranks? During an attempt to escape Camp Campbell? Looking for Neil or Nikki? Suddenly, all the times he’d wandered into the forest and was pulled out and scolded by David felt like near-misses rather than annoyances. 

“Never collect from small pools of stagnant water,” David’s voice echoed in his head. “They could be contaminated.” Though the rain had made the ground wet and he could easily fill the canteen from any of the several puddles around, he forced himself o resist the urge and kept walking. 

“Water from upstream has a better chance of being clean than downstream,” he heard, a memory from the day they’d hiked to the girls’ camp to return a laptop that Gwen had borrowed and been too lazy to give back.

“Use your senses,” a piece fo advice that Max had definitely mocked as obvious but, in his panic to find resources, had overlooked. “You might be able to hear the sound of running water, even if it’s far away.” Max stood perfectly still and tried to tune everything else out. 

Bingo.

A babbling sound, probably the small waterfall from where the river flowed into the lake, was what he focused on and headed toward. Just like the book had told him to do, he marked his route on his map so he could follow it later and headed toward what he hoped was water. 

He was right. 

He filled the canteen with water, placed in one of the iodine tablets from the backpack to sterilize it as best he could, and turned around to discover that he was completely and utterly lost.


End file.
